John welcomes guest Heather Webster of Heather Webster Wellness on the show to talk about connection to self and connection to nature.

Heather Webster is an educator, a health coach, Mindful Outdoor Guide, and a lifelong learner. She supports women to live a fulfilling healthy radiant life that aligns with their purpose. 

Heather uses a holistic journey approach to look at the individual as a whole, so women can find radical self-love, self-confidence, and a stronger connection to their spirit and self, to reach their wildest dreams and find joy in the everyday.

John and Heather discuss the way that many people feel disconnected from themselves, from others, and from nature. They talk about health, the effect of social media, mindfulness, and belief.

How do we begin to feel more connected? What are some of the healing powers of nature? How does intuition and belief relate to manifestation?

You can connect with Heather at

heatherwebsterwellness.com

Instagram: @heatherwebsterwellness

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/heatherwebsterwellness

Announcer 0:28

Hello, and welcome to speaking spirit where we talk about all things spiritual. Your host, John Moore is a shamanic practitioner and spiritual teacher. And now his John.

John Moore 0:44

Good morning, everybody. Well, I say good morning, I always do that. I would say good morning, even though I have no idea what time of day it is when you're listening to this, but it's morning for me, I always record these in the morning. I've had my coffee, and I'm ready to go. I hope you're all doing well. And I'm very excited today because I have a guest. And it's been a while since I've had a guest. And I was on her podcast recently. And so I'm forcing her to come on my podcast, it's, you know, I'm not above guilting people into coming onto my podcast, but it is. It's my pleasure to introduce you to Heather Webster of Heather Webster wellness.

And Heather does a bunch of interesting stuff. Stuff that I'm completely fascinated with. So I'm gonna let her introduce herself better than I can, I'm sure. And talk a little bit about what you do. Good morning, Heather.

Heather Webster 1:41

Good morning. Wow. Yes, it was definitely not a force. I'm so excited.

I'm excited because I get to have yours air next week. So it's very exciting.

And no, I'm just so excited to be here, to be honest. And when I woke up this morning, I was just like, Oh, I get to, I get to see John and talk to him. Because we have so much in common and things that we're interested in. And the conversation just flows, which is fantastic. And so a little bit about me, I am a educator at heart. I was raised as I wanted to be a teacher from the time I remember stating it in second grade. When I was younger, I had a classroom of imaginary friends gotcha that I would teach. And it was just super fun. And so I was doing that for a really long time and just recently started to do a deeper dive into kind of doing some more healing for myself. And when I was an educator, back in the day, I had decided that I wanted to go back to school for nutrition. And so I did go get my Master's in nutrition and physiology. And while I was there, I was diving into the fact that like a lot of what they teach you in traditional school is very much about what they want you to know. Yes, nutrition and exercise and things like that. And a lot of it's based off of kind of who's in charge

at the higher level, right. And so as I was when I was finishing up my thesis, I actually went to South Korea for a year, and was teaching English to some preschoolers and high in older grades. And as I was there, I was really starting to realize that I still loved teaching. And I did not want to go into like a research field, which is kind of like if you're in nutrition, you're either going the dietician, route, or you're going the route of research, and that was not my thing. And so I started hiking again and getting back out in nature was in South Korea, and finding that love for being outdoors. Again, I've always been an outdoorsy person. And thinking back now, back in the day, right? When I was having a tough time as a child, I would immediately go outside and go catch frogs or snakes or like and connect with them, but or climb a tree. Climbing trees are kind of my memory. It's kind of funny. Earlier this morning, I was outside and I was thinking, Hmm, I guess I was thinking about you and be on your podcast and authors and things like that. Well, we've talked about in the past. I was like I need to make an alter to my childhood.

John Moore 4:33

Oh, that's a that's a fantastic idea. I love that idea.

Heather Webster 4:39

Because what I'm trying to do right now is really connect back because that's where joy and play comes in. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, Oh, I can go through some pictures and they all came up like yesterday, I was posting a picture of my childhood. And so once I moved to New Hampshire is when I really started doing a lot of my healing. I had been reading Ireland for a while. And when I was moved to New Hampshire, I realized how disconnected I had become. Right and, and I had actually gotten to the point where I felt quite depressed and didn't even know it. But I had no interest in going out. I didn't really care to see people, I was just like, happy in my place. But that's not me. And I wasn't really happy. And so I started to get dive into more meditation, I went back to school for health coaching, I did mindful outdoor guide training, and really started to look into how can I reconnect with myself so I can connect with others? Yeah. And a lot around self confidence, self love, and self like self care, but also looking at how I was talking to myself.

John Moore 5:52

Mm hmm. Yeah, that's a good, that's a very good thing to look at. I have lots of clients that I talked to. And that is a major thing, that is a major issue for them. We talk to ourselves in ways frequently that we would never accept from anybody else. And yeah, and we just think that's normal. And it's okay. And it can be really destructive and unhealthy. For sure.

Heather Webster 6:23

John Moore 7:13

Right, right. It's it's a loop and yeah, you're absolutely right. It's, um,

you know, it's interesting that somebody, I do a lot of work with belief, right, like, what people believe in what people hold to be true. And pretty recently, I don't know, in the past few months, I heard a really good definition of belief. And

you know, and, you know, the I went through the whole Boys Don't Cry era, right, in the whole men. You know, there's only two emotions that are acceptable for men, you know, laughter and anger. That's it. Anything else is a completely unacceptable so we cram a lot of stuff. And I think that most men and I include myself in that bundle, you know, at least earlier in my life, are unaware of what's going on in our heads. Frequently, you know, it's really, really unconscious, because we can't, we can't look at that stuff. It's too painful. And we can't show up as a masculine, right, like, that's a bad thing to be not, uh, you know, and again, this I think this is changing. I see that changing in our culture.

You know, in my girls school, for example, my girls are in high school and there are a lot of transgender children. There are a lot of children who can identify in whatever the way they want and I don't Hear about bullying, happy happening or anything like that, um, that would have been very risky behavior when I was in high school for somebody to identify as a gender that they weren't born, you know, that they weren't born into. Or to, or to be gay or to anything, you know, anything that deviated from the norm was risky. And I mean, physically risky. I mean, you know, it was, it was dangerous. So I'm happy to see some of these changes, and I'm happy. I'm happy that you're working with women or whoever, to, you know, on this on this stuff. Because culture, is this oppressing for sometimes, right.

Yeah. And I like to talk to women about how their stories right and, and debunking them, right. So if you have the story of I am, I always fail, right? That's a huge story for women is I'm a failure, I fail at everything we talk about. Okay. That could be a story. So let's see if it is let's talk about the things that you've been successful at. And there's many times I have felt like, when I was going through that time, especially I was everything about what I was going through at that time was about me feeling like a failure. I had had foster children, that when I moved, I had to they Well, I didn't have when I moved, they went to a new foster family that was going to adopt them. So it was a great move for them. Because I was there to foster. But in my head, I was like, Oh, my gosh, you failed. Yeah, no, I didn't. I totally did. And it all stems I think to from when I was a child, but then the biggest failure that I had in my head was my divorce, of how could you not make this happen? How could you not make this and so everything since then, if I didn't succeed, I felt like a failure. And so sitting down with my clients, but also sitting down myself when I went through this, going through all the things I've been successful at. Yeah. And that is and then talking and then coming up with new phrases to say, when you say that thing of like, oh, I fail at everything. Oh, wait, no, I don't I've done this and this and this, to kind of like reframe it. But it can be very tricky at first to catch yourself. Because a lot of it's happening just as you're going through today.

Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure, I'm sure that one of the things that you you probably run into and that I that I've run into with a lot of clients is the word can't. And then they say there's a four letter word, I can't I can't do this, or I can't do that. And, like I will, I will attack that belief, like a rabid dog and go after it and say, Okay, let's, let's stop. And let's look at that. And what does that mean? I can't like I'm physically not able to I'm emotionally not able to, you know, and what's your belief around that? Where does that idea where does that belief come from? That I can't, you know, and it really is a four letter word. Yeah, sure. There are things that maybe I can't do in exactly the way that I want to, you know, I probably can't win the Powerball. But I also don't buy Powerball tickets. So you know that that's very unlikely to happen. But I always say in an infinite and expanding universe, anything is possible, technically, statistically, it's possible. as improbable as it may be, but very frequently, Kant is a product of Well, I always, my parents always told me I wasn't good at this. Or when I tried this before, I wasn't perfect at it. And so I quit. And, you know, I taught I taught martial arts for about little over 20 years, I think, a very long time. And most people quit. Most people who start martial arts or anything like that quit. And I would say that the number one reason that people quit is that they're not a blackbelt on the first day, they're not, they're not, oh, you know, I did this, and I'm not perfect at it. And I'm like, I have been practicing that technique for 20 years, and I am not perfect at it yet. So it's, you know, this whole I have to be perfect thing. Um, I can't ever, quote unquote, fail at anything or, you know, whatever. But we like how much do we learn from our failure? How much do we you know, I went through a really you know, even after my divorce, I went through a really terrific, terrifying, terrific, horrific something I'm trying to work out over here, all the above. I went through I went through a very similar thing and You know, I wound up in a extremely unhealthy relationship with somebody who was abusive in every possible way. And gosh, I was like, Well, I guess I'm just never gonna be in a relationship again. Like, that's just, that's just what's gonna happen. And, you know, I failed clearly at my past two relationships, one of them was 20 years long, and I failed at that. And but, you know, ultimately, I looked at it as, okay, what am I learning from this? What am I learning about my boundaries? What am I learning about? And, you know, I did a whole thing recently about karmic relationships, where you get into relationships, that reproduce some of your old trauma so that you can heal from it. I'm not something I recommend to do consciously, I'm going to purposefully date an abuser so that I can, you know, work through that abuse, like, don't, but recognize that pattern in yourself recognize that that is what's going on. And, you know, we're drawn or sometimes we're drawn to drawn to that so we can we can heal from it.

Yeah, I love that. It's been coming up so much recently, kind of what you're talking about in just yesterday, I was listening to another podcast, and they were talking about how you can't succeed without failing. Yeah, right. So when we were learning to walk, we fail many times. So like, every single time, even the things that are innate in things that we're supposed to learn in that we are, it's in our genes to be able to do it takes practice, right? Yeah. And that's why I love like that meditation, yoga, like all those things, call it practice, right? Because it takes time. And going back to the other piece where you were talking about that connection between your thoughts and your beliefs. A lot of that comes into like when you're talking about manifestation as well, which is something that I'm fascinated with. A lot of people are talking about, oh, it's so woowoo. But I mean, no matter what you look, whoever you look at, right? People that pray for, right that there's like, people are manifesting every day, it just depends on how you manifest. So in this moment, I'm manifesting something. Yeah, for my future, right. And I think but in if your thoughts are on the negative, this is something that I love talking about with my clients a lot about, because if they're stuck in that negative your body wants to succeed. Or your soul wants to succeed at what you're thinking, right is your belief in all of that. And so if you're thinking, I'm always gonna fail, you're always gonna fail. Obviously, it's much bigger than that. But if, if you break it down to okay, I feel that this could be possible, and really ingrain it and start living your life that that is happening for you. And kind of letting go of the expectation of how it's gonna happen. Yes, they're gonna come for you. And then that like idea of like, I'm always failing at relationships, right? So I'm saying,

I've been part of it's like, oh, my life is so crazy right now, how can I find somebody but if I switch it to, no, it's possible. There's somebody out there that has a great schedule and everything else, then I'm going to start living that way. I'm also going to feel more confident for myself. And when I face the world, I'm going to face the world as I am lovable. And I it is possible for me to find love. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's interesting.

A couple couple things there that you mentioned, that are like stood out in my brain. So you talked about making an altar to your childhood, and you know how when we were learning to walk, we failed many, many times. And kids don't, kids don't have that thing. Like, we have to learn that we have to learn that failure is bad, we have to learn that we have to learn shame, right? Shame is not ingrained in us. It's not something we're born with. And that's really kind of what it's about. And so when when I was born, I had a number of birth defects. And the doctors told my parents, your son will never walk. And fortunately, my parents had a healthy disdain for for authority figures, as I probably do. And they were like, Screw that, and, you know, looked around and found me the medical help that I needed. And you know, but I didn't know I wasn't supposed to be able to walk. Now think about that with if I were, if I were an adult and something happened and the doctor said, You're never gonna walk again. I don't care what you do. Um, I might take that on. I might, you know, I might believe that. And whether you whether you believe in the whoo aspect of manifestation or not, life becomes a self fulfilling prophecy in the way that I'm going to be. behave according to my beliefs. Now, I like you, I believe we're manifesting everything. And so for example, yeah, you know, if when I'm listening to music, some sound waves are coming into my ear canals, and my eardrums are creating electrical impulses that go back into my brain. But my consciousness is assembling a concert, or you know, an orchestra or a band or a singer, or what have you. So, yeah, there's stuff going on out there. But I'm not I don't know what's going on out there. I only know what's going on in here. Right? And that's, you know, that was something that like for me to grasp. I was like, oh, yeah, like nothing, I'm not aware of anything outside of my consciousness, by definition, right. And so I'm, part of me is creating all of this or CO creating all of this weather, I'm, you know, and then, of course, when you get into shamanism, you start really messing with reality quite a lot. And so you realize how, how plastic it is, and how flexible it is, and how we can tune ourselves to different kinds of channels. And how, in the spirit world where there's no mass, things like time and space break down, just on a, you know, on a physical level. So very, very cool stuff. And I really love your idea of making an altar, I'm going to steal it, make an altar call for make an altar to your childhood. Like, I don't have enough altars around my house, I'm going to add one more somewhere.

Right. And it's like, you can see the joy. Or if there was pain in your childhood, you could heal that their journey through meditation type stuff. So I, I think there's or you can go back to like, even further back when that pain wasn't there yet. And it all happened, because, right, so this is like that whole manifestation, but also things happening in order where you can see after the fact how it works. And so for the my podcasting class, they asked us to look at a picture of our childhood and say something to that person to that child. And then yesterday, somebody posted a picture, posted a challenge of add a picture of you as a child. And so I did that. And then I was also like, oh, you know, I need to put that on my Facebook group for my followers, and ask them, What would you say to yourself as a child, and what does the picture say to you? And then I was outside, and all of a sudden, right intuition came through and said, you need an altar for your childhood, because you were so joyful, and playful, and you loved life and being outside and you're so connected to yourself at that point. It didn't mean I didn't have pain, right? And so have this struggles that I had with my, like different things that have happened or whatever. But it was, it was just a very clear, like, looking at those pictures of pure joy was outside too, right? Like, I'm outside in almost all my pictures that I'm smiling with huge, like a huge smile on my face, like Yeah, pigtails with my blonde, like super blond hair. And it was just like, I was so free to be who I was. And so it's very interesting as I start tapping the other piece of that, as you can see, I have so many fascinations around it, but they're all connected, right? Yeah. Intuition is something that I am so fascinated with supporting because I feel like as, especially as women are trying to reach goals or manifest things they need to tap in more. And I think because we're think we're so much out in like, Oh, this is what's happening out there. Right. You don't always listen to that inner self talk. Not the negative self talk, like, yeah, that those messages that are coming all the time.

Yeah, yeah. The universe is talking to us constantly. It will turn the volume up over time, if you don't pay attention to it, sometimes in ways that we don't think are pleasant, but are important to us for our learning. I have had many, such many such lessons. And not to be too you know, I don't want to like stereotype genders here. But um, you know, I think most women would be considered, you know, very intuitive, right, like more in touch. You know, just generally speaking, because of the way our culture is. Women are more in touch with their intuition or in general or have a better sense of their intuition. Everybody has the same intuitive ability, I think, but women have a greater capacity I think to tap into that. I'm part of that is for a terrible reason that we live In this patriarchy where women had to develop that capacity as a survival mechanism, um, but part of it is that there's the you know, the just the aspect of the divine feminine is intuitive, right? And so women, you know, women or people who identify as women are just closer to that naturally. And it really is sort of about finding, finding that balance and and this is not to say that men can't because men men out there you have to embrace you have to embrace the Divine Feminine that's in you. You could be the manliest man on the planet. I don't know. Maybe you to railroad spikes for breakfast, or something. I don't know. Um, whatever the stereotype of the manliest man on the planet that I definitely do not fit into that category, but

like Arnold Schwarzenegger back Yeah,

but even Arnold Schwarzenegger now he's got like, he's got like donkeys living in his house and like horses and stuff like in his house, he's, he's a, he's embraced the feminine aspect of of life as well, where he's become a nurturer and a lover of animals and all of these things. But, but men, there's a goddess inside of you, I hate to tell you, there's a God and a goddess inside of everyone. And really, you come into your power when you're able to tap into both aspects of that the Ken Wilber calls it arrows and agave, which are two different words for love. But he uses them as these these masculine and feminine divine impulses, not the distorted way that we represent gender, you know, with toxic masculinity or that sort of thing. But the the divine aspect, which is toxic masculinity is really immature. It's really about boy psychology. And, and that is not manly, when I see that I'm like, yuck, yeah, just gross. But something I want to circle back with you on. Because this has come up as a pretty big, it's one of the main reasons, clients contact me for healing sessions. And it's something that you've mentioned a couple of times. And it's about this sense of disconnection. And this has come up really quite a lot recently. And I think in part because of the pandemic, and we went through periods of lockdown, and even now people are still socially distancing. And, you know, there's a lot of you know, between people who are vaccinated, unvaccinated, there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of divisiveness, particularly in the United States, you know, political stuff, and people are picking sides on on things where they really don't need to be picking sides on. But it's just the way the world. But yeah, I mean, people are really disconnected. You know, and they frequently don't even know from what, right there just, I just feel disconnected.

And so I love that you, I love that you brought that up, and I love that that's something that you specifically work on. Yep. And it's, it's actually the whole basis of right my podcast and, and, and really, so when I first started working, I was working on like, this whole idea of like, every woman was like, stereotypical lose weight, right. And that just felt not, it didn't, it didn't fit for me, it felt like a negative way to kind of go at something. And as I started to pull apart, what people were really dealing with was a disconnection from themselves. So there's no way they could be connected with the world around them. Right? Because they were not connected with really what was happening within their own system, in who they were to be able to even think about connecting with their friends, their family, their co workers and the bigger world, right. And so, as I've been kind of working with clients, and really pulling out, what does that look like, it's a very, like holistic piece, right? You can't just say, Oh, I'm going to meditate every day. And that's going to make you connected to yourself. Right. And so we dive into a lot about like, you have to be connected. Nutritionally, you need to be connected with your physical body in whatever way that looks like, even going down to like whether you're exercising or you're intimate with a partner, all of which is right. That's emotional and physical. Yeah.

And like really diving into, okay, how are you feeling about your connection to your job? What is that bringing home every day when you come home at the end of the day? Or what is that connection you have? Like, what are you telling yourself as you're going through these different aspects of your life? And typically, if you heal that connection, you're going to have wellness overall, and that weight that you want to lose is going to come off right Are those right? Because there's those things of like, what is is the Earth really feeding you? And, as we've talked about in the past, right, so my, my love is nature, it will always be, I have a poster behind me with a woman walking into the mountains, and it says, and she lives happily ever after. Right? As she's walking into the mountains with a tree over her head, I have another poster over there that says, and into the forest, I go to lose my mind, and to find my soul. So really, when I think about what has healed me and connected me more than anything, is my connection to nature. And that means food, the food that we eat, am I getting the food from somewhere that I know where it's sourced? Is it coming in a package? And it doesn't mean I'm always perfect? Let's be honest. Yeah, I have treats I have things. But I'm also looking at like, am I getting outside every day? Am I taking time to be barefoot? Am I taking time when I'm outside to just be not racing to get to the summit, which I used to do? Now I'm like, oh, cool tree. Let me go give it a hug. Or let me go talk to it and say thank you for letting me be here. And really being super connected to where we came from.

Yes, yes, our source. And we are we we might feel disconnected from nature, but we are nature we're we're we're animals. We know, we have to, you know, our food might be produced in factories, but it came from animals or plants and or we hope oh, gosh, yeah, there's probably food out there that didn't but um, you know, if you're eating right, your food came from animals or plants, and we're intimately connected, we are a part of it, we're not any different. We have, you know, we live in houses, and we have the internet and electronics and all of these things. But you know, we're still as much a part of nature and I love I love that you mentioned spending time barefoot. i When the when it's warm enough, I always walk out to the mailbox and bare feet. And and because I live under a ton of oak trees, I have to be very careful where I step. And so I have to take it slow. And I have to feel the ground under my feet. So I'm not, you know, stomping on an acorn and hurting my foot. You know, but that connection to the earth is so important. So important.

Can I share a story? Yeah, absolutely. So last year, when I was going through the mindful outdoor experience training that I was going through, we had a a job that we had to do, I'm gonna say quotes in job because really, this is, as I get into this, if this is my job, it will be amazing. Well, it will be I'm, I'm putting it out there, that's gonna be amazing. And so we were we had this kind of assignment to go and spend the day on the land. And so we had six hours before we were going to come together for counsel at the end of the day. And so I went to this space that I found not too long ago that I just truly love. It's a preserved area called Castle of the clouds, or castle in the clouds, and I just spent six hours maybe getting two miles maybe. Now I'd probably about two, two and a half miles, right. Because we are doing it very mindfully we take I would take time where I would sit and do a sit spot, I would do journaling and for part for probably about half of it. This was in last November. I decided to go barefoot, so pretty cold out. But I was just like, Okay, let's see if I can what this looks like I can always put my shoes back on. I want to feel more grounded. And as I was going, I was like, Oh, this is so cool. This feels so nice. And then at some point, as I was coming back down the hill, my feet started to hurt. And I was like oh do my shoes on. My feet are so cold. And where am I stepping? I started focusing more on my stepping I started focusing on so much that was my physical body. And I was so I slowed down a minute. I was just like, What do I need to know? What am I trying to like? Do I need my shoes back on. And internally I hear stop focusing on your feet and look up because I was looking at every single thing I was going for. Once I looked up, I saw an amazing bird up in the tree as well. Which helped me remind myself to look up. But once I looked up and started walking, my feet stopped hurting. Yeah, so that I quickly journaled what that meant and like but during that time, I had so many messages that came in like that and it was just like, over and over and over again. They were coming and so it reminded did me I've just like, I need, I need to look up in that moment. But I also need to be looking up and looking for messages and signs or signals coming at me. Right throughout my day.

Yeah. And when you plug in, there's so much there's so much wisdom out there. Um, something related to that, that you mentioned before. You're talking to talking about people who were, you know, we're talking about this disconnection and reconnection thing. And, you know, I was one of these people. And you mentioned people say, Well, I meditate every day. And I was one of those people. And I was going through a crisis, and I'm like, I'm just gonna meditate more. Um, and meditation is fantastic. And I and I highly recommend it, and it has its purposes. But like anything, you can use it to completely unplug and become disconnected. And this is a form of spiritual bypassing, where we're not dealing with being connected, we're not dealing with this, we're like, I'm just gonna, like, clear my mind, which is a good thing to do. But to do it in lieu of plugging in and becoming really connected. And one of the things I love about the path of shamanism that I'm on, is that you really are expected to walk in both worlds, right? You're not just constantly journeying and going out of your body. We do work out of our body, but then we bring it back. And we always have to ground that work in and there's a I wish I could remember the podcast, but there's a woman who does a shamanic podcast, and she always asks, that's great, but does it grow corn? Right? Does it grow? The court does it like what you're doing is fantastic. You're doing all these like, cool. And I love this stuff. I do all kinds of esoteric work with in journeying and, you know, get artwork from you know, that and all kinds of stuff. Um, but at the end of the day, I have to feed my children and live in the world and work with clients and work with students and talk to you on this podcast, which I couldn't probably do in trance. Right.

And actually pretty fascinating. Yeah,

I mean, I do I do work. I do some work in trance like that. When I do divination work. Oh, I will. I will work in trance. But I don't know what's gonna come out of my mouth. So it's a little worrying. I mean, one

of the things you said to right, like when you're talking about, you can't be in that state all the time, because then you disconnect. And they also think it's like the the direct opposite is true as well. If you do meditation in the morning, and you're like, Oh, I'm done with all being present? Because I did my meditation. Yeah. You like it? That's disconnected to have like, there's a way to be present all day. And being connected by it, right, like being present is being connected. And so it's I think you can't be a meditation all day, unless you're doing like some kind of journey or things like that, where you're like, Oh, what was that other? When you're like, in that, like, you take a weekend and you fast for the weekend?

Oh, yeah. Like,

yeah, right. Like, that's very different, where you're saying, This is what I'm doing for the weekend, versus like spreading the day. I'm gonna meditate all day and not talk to anybody. I'm not gonna like, I'm gonna be in this own world, or oh, I meditated already. So I'm done. I checked that box. And now I'm going to do my next thing I have to do versus like, being present, even when you're doing the dishes, and thinking, Oh, how does the water feel? How does it feel when it's warm? How does it feel when it's cold? Like, what does it feel like? How grateful Are you the fact that you have water to wash your dishes? I hate washing the dishes, by the way. So this is for me. It's something I'm working on and being like, Oh, this is great. Um, but be in that state of almost like the gratitude connects you?

Yeah, yeah. So I don't know if you're familiar. Are you familiar with Tom Brown, he wrote the book, the tracker and grandfather and he wrote a series of books. And he, as a boy, he lived next door to a Native American family and the grandfather was an Apache Scout, and trained him and all of the ways of tracking and wilderness survival and all of these things. And gosh, about many millions of years ago, I went and did a course with Tom Brown. I went and I went in, studied, did a wilderness survival and tracking course with him and it was fascinating and we did spiritual work, and we did a sweat lodge at the end and it It was really, it was fantastic. It was just a great week. It was like 114. He can we were intense, but you've just forgot about it, because we were like you were so just tuned in at that time. But he talks about and he refers to the, the grandfather, that was his friend's grandfather, who was the Apache Scout, he called him grandfather out of respect. And he talked about he had walked from somewhere, like, maybe a few 100 miles over a few days, and come back. And the first thing he did was, you know, walk back onto the land, and there was a stream running behind the house. And he just scooped the water up in his hands and held it and was praying to it and tears were coming down his eyes. And like that touched me like, like, when when I look at water, like just water, right? Like, how amazing is water, it's this like, clear substance that gives us life that dissolves almost anything that is soft and soft, but can cut through stone over time, and, and can form any shape and just what you know, and I don't, I certainly don't have the insight into water that this gentleman had. But what a miracle and and like to be grateful for something that we see every day can be challenging. And you might have to look at it from a different perspective. But what a miracle everything is, what a miracle that we can have this conversation, right in different states, what a miracle that, you know, light comes into my retinas and forms a picture of you in my brain, like my consciousness is doing that, right. And I don't care how smart computers get. And I have a, you know, I have a multi decade, you know, experience in computer science, I don't care how smart they get, they will never have the subject until we you know, just start growing brains. They will never have the subjective experience of reality that we have. Yeah, they can recognize faces in a photo or what have you. But they don't have the complete experience that we have, which is emotional, which is, you know, on so many different, so many different levels. It's just ones and ones and zeros. Humans are not binary like that. And so they don't, nor are, nor are any spirits binary like that. And I do want to point out that well, we were talking a minute ago and you were talking about looking up that giant bird this ginormous fat squirrel climbed up on my porch railing was like looking at me like, Yeah, throw some food out for me today or what? So I will I will throw some food out for him after.

It's amazing how right like I think if you take the time outside and really tuning in, you start to see those things that come right like that squirrel wants food. The other night, I've finished a meditation and I had fallen asleep during it. It was one of Joe dispenses like hour long meditations that I was just laying down. I was like, You know what, let's just do this. Well, like as they fall asleep. And sometimes when you're you do fall asleep, right, the meditation can be even more powerful. And so I fell asleep. And when I woke up probably about five minutes before it ended. And literally like on the second ended, like everything went quiet. And then there was howling, like super loud howling right outside my window. And so then my puppy starts barking so I know it hadn't been happening. And I'll before her because she would have picked that up. She's like, so fascinated with noises right now. And it was just like, it was so loud. And it was like nipping and playing it. It was in there sounded like at least like 10 of them potentially. So it was a pack and I think of of coyotes, because that's really what I could think of that would be around here. But there's just something about that, that I knew there was some kind of message in there. Right, like this idea of this happened. And then there was a whole pack of coyotes. And when I went to unlatch the window to kind of like hear a little bit louder. They had to be super close because they heard me unlatch it and they stopped. And

yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's fantastic. I love experiences like that. In you know, in the shamanic world, we would treat something like that, particularly where there's a synchronicity in time as an omen. And we would, you know, we would do a journey to interpret that because it's really, and I you know, I caution people from like, looking up what their omens mean, in a book or In, you know, online or whatever, because the it's going to be really individual to you, it's going to be something that's meaningful to you. And they happen in context. So what is going, you know, if I were working with a client and trying to interpret and Omen like that, I would say what was going on in your life when that happened? And what? What were you doing right before that while you were doing this, and this happened? So that's a synchronicity. And then they would do journey work around that to try to suss out if that had, you know, what sorts of meanings that might have for you. But yeah, I mean, that's a beautiful thing. When things like that happen. And nature spirits have a way of, of showing up sometimes as birds or coyotes, packs, or fat squirrels or what, what have you that guy has been stocking up for the winter, we have a ton of acorns right now. So they're, they're eating really well, but I'll still, I'll throw some stuff out for him. And I feed the chipmunks in the squirrels and the lots of birds and stuff here. So it's one of the ways that I connect,

when we talk about it in the guiding like when I do mindful outdoor garden, we talk about it being like the more than human world, and like the squirrel people and like the coyote people and, and kind of it's just it fascinates me. I've always been fascinated by animals. In my family. Hawks are big. When my dad passed away, I don't know if I've shared this story with you or not. But when my dad passed away, I returned back to school, back to school, I was teaching it I was a toddler teacher at the time. And it was my first day back after he had passed away. And we were going outside for playtime right outside time or recess. And there's I mean, when you go outside with toddlers, they're not quiet, right? And there were two classes of toddlers. So at least 24 kids out there, plus the infants were out there playing as well. And when I walked out the door with the kids, a hawk came and landed on the school roof, and was watching us the whole time. When I called the kids to line up. We were the only class going in at that time. So when I called them to line up. As we were going into the building it flew away. And I was just like, Okay, dad. Uh huh. Right. Thank you. Thank you for saying you're still here. Like, yeah, and it was just an ever since then. Hawks, Bert, like you said birds are huge in my family. Yeah. My grandmother loved birds. My mom loves birds, my uncle lights Bert like, and so whenever I see a hawk, it always reminds me of my dad, like, that's kind of, or deer, right? Like, and I do talk to my dad a lot. Like when I'm trying to get through things. Like when I was running the marathon and doing that training, and I was going through longer runs, I'd be like, Okay, Dad, go alongside me and get me through this. And it's a nice way to kind of just call in the spirits and call in everything that round you to kind of say like, Okay, right now I'm asking for a little bit of support and push, right. And it works for me.

And our ancestors want to support us even if, you know, I might not have had the best relationship with some of my ancestors. And for a really long time. Might have rejected some of them. But um, you know, we're all the product of who knows how many generations of human beings, you know, 20,000 generations of human beings or more. And so there is strength there. And everybody has everybody has somebody in their, you know, some people or someone in their family tree who was crummy in their lifetime. And so yeah, if you you know, if you do the ancestry.com thing or whatever, you might find that some of your ancestors did some things that you wouldn't find to be okay. Um, but what happens when people pass away is the egoic stuff gets stripped away, the trauma gets stripped away, you know, that sort of thing. And so we can heal that we can heal ancestral wounds. But we can also draw a tremendous amount of strength if you think what had to happen, you know, I think about so my grandmother still alive 105 years old, was born in 1916 in Bath, Maine, no electricity running water or heat. Other than, you know, a pot bellied stove or whatever it was a stove that they cooked on heat their house with and whatever. Um, you know, when I think about surviving that, let alone our ancestors that didn't have houses or whatever the strength, the intelligence, the wisdom, that they must have had the ability to work cooperatively we would not have survived as a species without cooperative hunting, for example, or cooperative planting, for example, we could, it is the thing, you know, it is the thing that you know, some lots of primates have this, but you know, we, we have it, and if we didn't have it, we didn't have these connections back to our ancestors. And they didn't have these strengths and these ability to pull together and work and be connected with with nature and with, you know, the world, they wouldn't have fed themselves themselves and they would have died out or they wouldn't have had shelter, and they would have died out or what have you. And so I think about it that way. And we can draw a tremendous amount of strength from our, from our ancestors, which includes our parents, whether they're, you know, still with us or not, and our grandparents again, and all the way on back all the way back for, you know, many, many 1000s of generations. Although I'm I'm from I'm from Maine, so I frequently joke that my family tree looks like a reef. Somebody I, I do a morning, I do a bit, not not a bit. That's not a good word for it. I do a radio segment once a week here in Maine, where callers, you know, people call in and I do dream interpretation for them. And very recently, a man called in and you know, I just get their first name. Oh, this is Sean. Hi, Sean, tell me about your dream. And he's like, oh, you know, we have the same last name where we might be related. Like, we're both in Maine. Man, we're, we're, you know, I would assume whether or not we had the same last name, we're cousins somewhere. It's a It's not that biggest.

It's funny, right? Like, you have to be connected. Somehow it no matter what, right? If you go back far enough, I reached out to recently I went to where my dad's family is from in Vermont. And I was exploring kind of the cemeteries, everything for cemeteries, they're just fun to watch around. But if but when you get to see like, Okay, here's where one of your ancestors was buried, right? And I started to see that there was a plaque for somebody in the same area connected for one of another Webster, right? And so I was like, Oh, I wonder if we're related because that person had died yet. Right. So like, it was like a black thing where they're going to be rested. Right? So I actually contacted him. And I was like, maybe related. And so as we went back and forth, there wasn't a clear connection. But we think we started to find a little bit of a connection. And for me, I was really fascinated. It was just interesting. He's a lot older, because I'm so I'm trying to tap into people that maybe, because we have a super small family. And so it's always nice to see, is there maybe some other people out there that you're connected with in ways that you don't even know? And yeah, I mean?

Well, Mike, you know, my grandfather was one of nine kids. So I have many, many, many. Second, third, fourth cousins. Second, you know, great aunts, and uncles, and all of that sort of thing. And there's, you know, there's fascinating stuff there. And some of their, you know, going back and doing, you know, some ancestral research there, there are families with, you know, 13 kids, 14 kids, so there's, you know, think about how many, like, how many people I'm related to, just in this area alone is an NGO, we've been here since, you know, that side of my family has been in Maine, since the 1600s. So, you know, close to 400 years, and that's a lot of generations. And so there's a lot of people that I'm related to, not all with the same last name, but there's a lot of there's a lot of Moore's out there that are, that are probably related to me. And I found I have found cousins on Ancestry and stuff that I didn't know about. One, one kid, I found out kid, he's my age is actually older than I am. But I think of him as a kid because I played with this guy, when I was young, between the age of like five and 10. And then he moved away moved out of state. And just found out that we're cousins, like, crazy through one of these, I can't remember who was ancestry or 23andme, or whatever, but came up as a relative. I'm like, I haven't talked to that guy in, you know, almost 40 years. Like, that's crazy. So, so yeah, yeah, it's we're, we're all connected.

And that's where it comes into, like, what's the what? Why was, why was it that you're supposed to play with them as a child and now you're like hearing about them again, right? And are you supposed to reconnect and I'm finding that a lot and part of that's helping with social media, right, so social media has its own ups and downs of what Yes, what is great for but one of the things is really connecting people that you might have lost touch with. But then trying to dive into that more of how can you make those connections more real? I actually reached out to so one of the times I was feeling like that failure piece around the kids, when I had them, I reached out to a friend of mine said, Okay, your social media looks like everything's perfect. Just let me know, is everything perfect for your kids? And she's like, Oh, no, no, no, we you don't see like a minute before that they were screaming at each other and fighting. And so write those things around, like, what is reality? And what is what is people and I think that's another reason why people might be feeling even more disconnected with themselves in the world is that there's this idea of what is perfect, and there's no words. Perfect,

right? So social media. Yeah, I mean, I agree. Like, I have reconnected with lots of people, I would not have been able to reconnect with otherwise great friends from the past that, you know, we've all moved around and done different things. And, but yeah, I mean, so social media is our people's highlight reels, right? Um, I don't post stuff about my kids, when I've had issues with them. You know, but like, when I'm proud of them, I'm gonna post a photo of that, but I, you know, and I've had clients, you know, they're like, Oh, well, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. Because I see, you know, and I remember I worked. You know, I do coaching as well. And I worked with this woman over a couple years, actually. And she was really upset that she was single and couldn't find somebody. And I'm like, Well, you know, what, what's the Russians? Tell me more about that? She's like, Well, I'm just, you know, I'm online. And all of these people are in these fantastic relationships. And I'm like, Are they though? Are they do know for sure that they're all happy? Do you know that they're all healthy relationships? Do you know that? The relationships not you know, and hopefully, some of them are, but you have no way of knowing. And I don't know who there's, there's a quote, and I wish I wish I knew who said it, but I'll look it up, maybe. But comparison is the death of joy. Right? When you start looking at, oh, what's this person doing? And I fall into that trap? I fall into that trap. I'm like, Ah, you know, and I'm trying to get, you know, I'm trying to get, you know, I've got this podcast, and I have an app that just came out, and I've got a YouTube channel, and I've got, like, I'm doing all this stuff. And I'm like, wow, you know, I'm working on a, I'm working on a book and I'm like, why hasn't the shift network called me to do the summit on shamanism? Haven't they heard of me, I see all these people, what do they do? You know, and I'm like, I gotta stop that. That's just crazy. I'm on my path. And I'm going to do what I'm doing. And I'm going to be successful in the way that the universe wants me to be successful. But, and I got to stop beating myself up because I'm, you know, these the, see these people who've been doing this for, you know, some of them longer than I've been alive. Okay, maybe they have maybe, maybe they've been, you know, have a right to some more perks than I, you know, that. I'm working hard. But, you know, I'm also trying to work smart and not. But yeah, I mean, social media can connect us and it can also disconnect us. And it has, unfortunately, some of the stuff particularly that's going on with Facebook. You know, they have been purposefully stirring up divisiveness with some of their their algorithmic stuff, and they know that they're doing it. And I think that that's really unfortunate. That that's been that that's been going on I have I've lost friends on social media. I think probably because, I mean, sometimes like somebody show, turns up turns out to be very racist. And I'm like, um, we might have been friends in high school, but I cannot have that in my life. That's not going to work out. I have mixed race children, and there can be no part of racism in my life. You know, so that's, that's something and then I did, I looked up an old friend from junior high, when I moved back to me and I lived in Boston for for 20 years. And, um, when I moved back, I looked up an old friend from junior high and found them on the sex offender registry, and that was clearly not, you know, a friendship that I needed to rekindle. So there's, you know, there's a little bit to be said for that. But, um, I, you know, like to use tools to connect and I hope that I'm trying to be more people useful about the way I communicate with people and you know, less divisive, it's hard. I'm, I'm an opinionated person. You know, well, I'm

right. It's why we do what we do, right? We want to get the the, we want to get the message out to everybody. And at the same time, we're going to lose people potentially. That might have been, oh, we like your message, but we don't like that message. And it's, and that's okay. And I'm the same way if, if, if I see that you are racist, if I see that there's some hatred towards a certain group of people, any of those kinds of things. It's like, that's not okay with me. And I'm okay to lose those people. But at the same time, when when you see things happening on social media, you're like, Oh, I was unfriended. I wonder why. Right? And so you go into your inner talk of like, why did they unfriend me? What did what happened? And oh, did I say something incorrect? And then going back to like, Wait, what is my message? Yeah, am I who do I want to be? I obviously wasn't the right person for that person. The same reason I unfriended that other person because they were racist. And like, knowing obviously, very different reasons, but knowing that you can't be there for everybody, and sometimes social media, because you watch all these people with so many people who have so many followers, and, and then you go in you realize that they bought their followers? Oh, yeah, those kinds of things. And it's just you just have to be like, Okay, I'm going to center myself. Who am I? Where am I going? Right? Yes. Like, somebody was saying the other day, I was listening to this seminar. And she was talking, and she's really well known for just being an amazing speaker, and really just empowering people. And she said, Yeah, somebody asked me if I wanted to be on Oprah. And she goes, who mean Oprah to be the person that you have to be on that show? And right, Oprah is just a person. Right? Right. Do I have to strive to be on Oprah. Now, I would love to be on Oprah. She said, but she's like, but that's not what I'm striving for. I'm striving for getting my message out and connect. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's, it is like, yeah, it's, you know, Oprah, as lovely and wonderful as she is, um, you know, talking about not her as a person, but her as the entity of the show and the business and all of that. It's a tool to get the message across. But why has that big? Yeah, for real? Why has that become the arbiter of how we measure success? And can't we measure success? All in our own each individual way? And it's hard because there's pressure, there's a lot of cultural stuff about what success looks like, is it financial? Is it? I have so many followers, I've seen the point of like, people buying their followers, I've seen like brand new Instagram accounts with 60,000 followers, I'm like, okay. You're not a famous person. So it wasn't, it wasn't like Oprah started an Instagram account and got a million followers that I could understand this is just some random person that also like pops up with 60,000 followers? And is that number a measure of success? And are you really getting a message to those people? Because it paid them to, you know, or however it works? I'm not exactly sure. I know that I've seen stuff where you can pay for a certain number of followers. They can't, they're either not real or whatever. But they're not interested in what you have to say,

right? They're not your ideal client, right? Or you're like the person you're wanting to reach. Right?

And I'd love to be on Oprah. But I don't know that Oprah's audience would care about what I have to say, you know, you know, I would I never pass up an opportunity to speak to anybody, but but, you know, would that be successful for me, you know, or whatever. So just a brief, brief, funny story. So I used to live in Boston, and a really good friend of mine worked at Harvard University. And she would every morning, stop into this cafe and get breakfast, same place. It was a very popular local place. It turns out that Ben Affleck used to like to go there when he lived in Boston. And Oprah did a special where she went back to Boston with Ben Affleck and he took her around and brought her into this cafe. Well, for about six months after that, my friend could not stop in and get breakfast there because there were lines out the door. And everybody wanted to order what Ben Affleck ordered which was something odd that you know, off the menu or something. And these these poor, not poor but like the it was two brothers that ran this cafe. They like within two days after that episode aired, they ran out of food One of them was getting married. And there were like, we didn't know how to manage. Like, we didn't know how to deal with this, like it was overwhelming. And again, like, yeah, it was this huge boost for their business for six months, or however long it was. But are those people going to become the lifelong client? Or customer? Like my friend is who goes there every day to get breakfasts day in and day out for years to get breakfast? So

great. Yeah, yeah. What a great story, because they also could have potentially lost their ideal people.

Yeah, yeah. Well, they lost, you know, I mean, she went back eventually. And this is the only reason I know this story is because she talked to that she knows the guys who own it. And they're like, they were like, just days, they're like, oh, my gosh, Oprah. I don't know. But they didn't, you know, and they, I don't know if they knew they were coming in or not. But they definitely were not prepared for what happened. And I know, like similar things where I know, people got a product, the people were manufacturing a product, they got it listed on QVC. And they couldn't keep up with the demand. They can produce it quickly enough for the sales for QVC. So QVC dropped them. So that was that they're done. They can't go on QVC anymore. So yeah, there's this thing about like, instant success, and then instant fizzle, right? And the the effect that that can have on people where when you're reaching and connecting with the right, the right people, the people, and whatever you do, if you do it, well, there are people out there that want want to want to connect with you and receive the benefits of that. And, you know, you and I are both people who have our hearts in the right place. We're both really into helping other people. And we can't help everybody we can't, there are people who would never accept the way that I help people. And that's fine. That's not my Those aren't my people. But I hope, you know, I hope they find what they need in another way. But that's fine. You know, it's cool. I can't, you know,

it almost sounds like a huge like lesson right there for the person who is the like, the cafe owner. And then like the QVC. And I think of people that like, win the lottery, right, and they lose it instantly. And I think about kind of what's that lesson overall of if you're wishing or manifesting for something more greater than what you're supposed to get. It's almost like some people might get that and then have to be taught the lesson. Yeah, you gotta slow it down a little bit, or seeing what, where you are and what's best for you, your business, the people around you. Yeah, yeah. Not that I wouldn't want to win the lottery.

I think I wouldn't turn that down either. Well, we have, I'm looking at the clock, I talked to him for a very long time. And I know that you have something to get to in very shortly. And I don't want to, I want to respect your time. But it has been, you know, again, like when I came on your podcast, we just could talk forever and never run out of things to talk about. So what I'm going to propose is that we should probably in the future, do each other's podcasts again, because we've clearly have more stuff to talk about. And I hope that I hope that that that works for you. This has been just a fantastic and fascinating conversation. And I want to thank you for coming on, but also how before I forget how it you know, so people are interested in what you do. How do they find you? How do they get in touch with you?

Sure, yeah. And it's been an amazing pleasure as you as we've talked about in the past, like Time flies when we're having conversation, I would love to kind of keep this partnership going. Yeah. And so they can find me, I have a website, HeatherWebsterWellness.com. You can find me on Instagram @HeatherWebsterWellness. You can also find my Facebook group at Heather Webster wellness. And but you can find all of that if you go to Instagram, I have a link tree link in there where a lot of this stuff is listed.

And I'll put links up in the show notes. So depending upon how you listen to this, it you know, it might not show up in iTunes or something but you can go into the show notes and there will be there will be at least the URL and stuff for each of these things. So

find it there and definitely, definitely check Heather out. She's got a lot of really, really very interesting and cool stuff going on that that that I jive with. And just once again, thank you for. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you. Alright, so

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